Drug Testing Welfare Recipients

Drug Test All of Us

In his article Drug Test All of Us, Adam Chodorow describes the different ideas behind whether the United States should drug test the recipients of welfare. Chodorow begins by saying the 15 states have recently passed laws that require people who receive welfare to be drug tested. He says that these laws have been said to be "an attempt to demonize the poor." Chodorow also notes that although the government wants to be sure that the welfare money is not used for drugs, he says that other forms of federal aid, such as farmers and businesses, are not required to be drug tested. He questions whether this shows that the government is only trying to make the poor seem like bad people.

I agree with what Chodorow is saying, even though I do not know much about how federal aid programs work. I understand that the government wants to make sure that the money that they give is used for things such as food and housing and not for drugs, but I think that it is unfair to assume that the people receiving help do drugs. I don't think that the government should be demonizing people who need help. Also, I am not sure how much drug tests cost, but I think that they are expensive. I don't think that the money spent on drug tests would be worth it in the long run. It is unfair to assume that only people of lower socioeconomic status do drugs and therefore are worthy of having drug tests, since different types of recipients of federal aid, that are typically a higher class, are not drug tested. I chose this topic because my sister was talking about how Arizona spent millions of dollars on drug testing welfare recipients, and they only found one person who tested positive. I thought that it was ridiculous and I wanted to learn more about it. I searched "drug testing welfare recipients" on Google, and found a reliable news source.